Gravelight

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  You can afford to buy your own booze. A revulsion that had nothing to do with his drinking suffused Wycherly. He might be the lowest of the low, but he'd never stooped to stealing pennies from a blind girl's cup when his parents were available to wheedle.

  And he didn't actually want to drink anyway.

  So he told himself.

  "Wycherly?" Sinah appeared, leaning over the rail, a ghostly form in a Mickey Mouse sleep shirt. "What's wrong?"

  "Couldn't sleep," he lied glibly.

  "Oh," Sinah said. "Neither could I. Are you hungry? We could make breakfast and get an early start."

  It was, after all, nearly jive A.M. "Sounds great," Wycherly said easily. Sinah disappeared and he limped back to the couch to retrieve the rest of his clothing.

  The mist of early morning hung in the air and swirled thickly about the ground when they stepped outside. The waste heat that cities produced had long since put an end to the pea-soup fogs that they had once hosted, and now morning mist was something that only country-dwellers were familiar with. It hid most of the trees and turned the rest to grey, dew-spangled phantoms. The Jeep Cherokee was a vague, dark shape in the distance, its windows misted to opacity.

  Wycherly hobbled after Sinah, using a carved walking staff she'd found among her possessions. Someone named Jason Kennedy had given it to her as a gag gift. His ankle still ached piercingly, but now he could walk on it, at least a little.

  It occurred to him, as he got into the car, that he didn't really want to go back up to Wildwood Sanatorium and find out which part of what he'd seen was real and which belonged to the beast. But Sinah was set on it, and as usual, Wycherly couldn't find the strength to protest in the face of such a vital personality.

  He leaned back against the seat as Sinah drove cautiously up the dirt road that was the continuation of the paved one in Morton's Fork, searching for the gates to Wildwood. She'd brought one of her trophies from yesterday with her; the postcard of Wildwood in its glory days was balanced on the dash, its tamed and tailored garden an unsettling counterpoint to the neglected wilderness outside the windows.

  Wagging canes of wild rose brushed over the windows and roof of the Jeep Cherokee like goblin fingers. Sinah drove slowly through the misty dawn, the car rocking laboriously over the obstacles in the drive. Everything around them was green, a closely woven veil of life.

  He wanted to rest, to sleep—and more than that he wanted the liquor that would replace those needs, wrap his consciousness in a soothing barricade that no harshness could penetrate. What's the point of being alive, if you're just going to spend it sealed away like that? Wycherly wondered idly,

  and grinned to himself. He didn't know. Why was anyone alive? It was the central riddle of existence, and Musgrave's failure son was not going to be the one who solved it.

  "There they are," Sinah said.

  From the insulated vantage point of a modern car, the tumbledown gates looked even more forlorn, and Wycherly suddenly remembered the bag he'd picked up from inside the pillar, the one filled with coins and beads. He'd taken it out of his pocket and put it in his shoulder bag when he'd given Sinah the pants to wash, but as he felt carefully around inside his pocket, his fingers touched a corner of it.

  What was it doing here?

  The half-formed question vanished as Sinah turned up the drive, heading for what had once been the terraced front entrance of the sanatorium.

  "I don't think I can take the car any farther," she said a few minutes later, applying the brake and shutting down the ignition.

  Wycherly looked at the eight steps and two terraces leading up to the ruined doorway. Suddenly he remembered the doorway in the deepest cellar of the mysterious ruin, the staircase leading further into the earth and the rushing water below.

  "Drive around. There's a staircase leading down from the north wall," Wycherly said.

  Monsters live there.

  The notion was childish, unreal; chagrin stifled his impulse to warn Sinah against trespassing into the monsters' domain. He glanced toward her—she was watching him with a half-questioning expression on her elfin face, lips slightly parted.

  Sinah drove carefully around the edge of the ruin. The flash of revulsion and terror she'd caught from Wycherly was still making her heart race. The image of the steps, the doorway, and the hideous river far below was vivid in her mind. Of course he wouldn't have mentioned them to her— but why hadn't he thought about them until now?

  It was almost as if he were trying to lure her in, somehow.

  Oh, knock it off, Sinah! Now who's being a moron? She pressed her hand over the bag beneath her shirt. The bag itself had been too fragile to wear, but she'd tucked it into one of those wallets-on-a-string that tourists and joggers wore around their necks. She could still feel it crackle as she pressed down on it.

  She turned the key in the Jeep's ignition and pulled back the emergency brake. They were here.

  "Why don't you run on ahead?" Wycherly said. "Yell if there's something interesting."

  "Sure," Sinah said. She would have been more upset by his dismissive tone if she hadn't been able to clearly sense how afraid he was. His internal monologue was chaotic; the voice of someone shouting so that he could not hear another's words.

  She opened the door and stepped out. After the air-conditioning in the Jeep, the morning air was wet and clammy: a stifling blanket. While she'd rambled all over these grounds in the last several weeks, she'd always stayed away from the ruins, fearful of accident. After the big quake a year or so ago out in L.A., no one who'd lived there had the least curiosity about what a ruined building looked like, and Sinah had felt no impetus to investigate.

  But things were different now. And if black magic would bring her primacy inside her own mind, she would embrace it unhesitatingly. She got to the edge of the ruins and looked down, braced by Wycherly's memories for the sight of the curving staircase and the altar below.

  She didn't see it.

  This is ridiculous.

  Sinah looked up to the sky—high, hazy, pale blue, open here where no trees grew—and back down. No altar. No black staircase, more to the point, since while she might not recognize an altar when she saw it— even from borrowed memories—everyone knew what a staircase looked like.

  She turned and went back to the Jeep.

  Wycherly had rolled down his window for ventilation. Though he'd seemed to be asleep, he turned and looked out at her challengingly as she approached.

  "I don't see it," Sinah said. "I looked. It isn't there."

  "Oh, bloody hell, girl, of course it's there—it's right in front of you."

  The legacy of forgotten English nannies surfaced in Wycherly's voice as he opened the door and climbed out of the car. He dragged the encumbering walking stick after him and glared at her, as if the need to go walking was entirely her fault.

  "I don't think ..." Sinah began.

  "Help me," Wycherly demanded. Reluctantly, Sinah came forward.

  He put an arm over her shoulders and started for the edge of the ruin, the image of the black stairs sharp and clear in his mind.

  It had to be there. He'd seen it, touched it, accepted its reality without question. It had to he there. He heard Sinah gasp under his weight; pain lanced through his ankle as he dragged himself up to the edge of the ruin.

  He looked out over the devastation, searching. The relief he felt when he saw it was so great he could have wept.

  "There." He pointed.

  Sinah pushed her damp hair back from her forehead; the sunlight glinted on the small bones of her wrist, the skin made shiny with sweat. She shook her head.

  "It's there," Wycherly said stubbornly, anger beginning to seep into his voice. Was she blind that she couldn't see it? Or merely playing games with him? He clenched his hand around the small linen bag in his pocket, gripping its unknown contents tightly. The disk sewn inside cut painfully into his hand.

  "There . . . oh, it's farther down than I thought." Sinah's voice wa
s flat, unreadable. "But I don't see any altar."

  "You can't see it until you're there," Wycherly said. "Go on."

  She looked back toward him, wide grey eyes beseeching, bargaining miracles. She wanted him to go with her. -Wycherly leaned on his stave and gritted his teeth against the pain in his ankle. It hurt—but he'd follow her down in a minute if there were a bottle at the other end, he knew that. And she could offer him one.

  "Will you stay here?" Sinah said quickly. "And . . . watch?"

  "All right." He spoke grudgingly.

  She turned away. Wycherly watched her go, vague desires for animal comforts jostling for precedence in his mind. He knew what he wanted most, but it was amusing to play the game, and imagine what else he might want instead.

  Sinah began her descent, slipping a little in her haste and catching herself against the rough brick wall. When she glanced back, the sight of Wycherly was reassuring—even if he was nearly as likely to push her into the pit as provide help. Her instincts told her that he wasn't a danger to anyone but himself, but that didn't mean he was much of a help, either.

  The sense that this was something familiar was frighteningly strong. As if it were water rising around her, Sinah fought against the conviction that she'd been here before—when the building was whole, when . . .

  When what? You don't know what, that's what! She pushed the thought away. Down and down and down—this staircase must have been really claustrophobic when the building was whole. Sinah found herself holding her breath against the smoke of a fire that had burned to ash and cinders more than sixty years before she was born.

  If you lose it here, you have no one to turn to, she told herself brutally. No one will help you, no one will come. Wycherly's ankle is bad — even if he wanted to, he couldn't get you out of here if you fell and broke something.

  She reached the bottom level. It was chilly; a good fifteen degrees colder than it was on the surface, and Sinah shivered, even in the T-shirt and baseball jacket that had seemed too hot earlier. The air was full of the smell of things rotting and transforming beneath the earth—like the root cellar had been, but far stronger. It made no sense; there were no earthen walls or floor here to give off such a scent—in fact, this room was carved directly from the rock itself; a black, close-grained stone. Basalt? It looked something like slate, and something like black sandstone, but Sinah was no geologist. All she knew was that it seemed to be an unbroken stone face. Bedrock. The mountain's heart. She took a steadying breath. Wycherly remembered it as being covered with debris, but the floor was swept bare.

  What are you suggesting: psychic grounds keepers from beyond the grave? If there is magic in the world, I'm sure it has better things to do with its time!

  There was nothing down here that could hurt her—an underground stream, that was all, and Wycherly was terrified of running water. She knew that, without really understanding why; he didn't think about the reason much, if were even within reach of his conscious mind. When he'd heard the sound the first time, he'd panicked, and that was what colored her perceptions now. Detoxing alcoholics weren't all that emotionally stable, after all. And he's going to fail again, just like all the other times. Why put himself through such hell only to make it all pointless the moment he takes his next drink?

  Because. That was the only answer to so many of the questions of human motivation. Because.

  She tucked her hands into her armpits for warmth and looked longingly back at the sun above. Far above, the light flashed on Wycherly's

  copper hair as he moved. At least they could see each other. That was some consolation—though not if she were bitten by a snake. But any self-respecting snake would be out in the sunlight getting warm, not down here in this . . . pit.

  Where the walls were rising up, growing higher and higher as she watched, choking her—

  Sinah forced herself to inhale again deeply, to fill her lungs and empty them and fill them again, thinking of serenity, of calm oceans and sunlit glades. The oppressive sense of terror receded. She touched the bag around her neck, cautiously probing the part of her mind that seemed to have become infested with that alien consciousness. This place held no resonance for that hungry ghost, but the sense that there was something here to be learned made Sinah step warily.

  Sinah had just about convinced herself that there was nothing here to fear when she saw the black altar and the gaping doorway beyond. She put her hand on the surface of the carven stone.

  Hot! The stone was as hot as if it stood in direct sunlight, and vibrated faintly as though it stood directly over some sort of mighty machinery. Sinah snatched her hand back and glared at it mistrustfully. There must be some kind of trick; the basement was in shadow; the stone could not be hot.

  But she didn't even stop to investigate the runes that Wycherly said this altar stone was carved with; it was the doorway that drew her. She could hear the rushing water, cold and pure and liquid, promising peace and comfort and rest. . . .

  Wycherly watched Sinah negotiate the slippery steps down into what (for lack of a better term) he thought of as the temple. Now that the two of them were here, he wasn't sure what good this little side trip would do Sinah in her quest to understand her family. He hadn't been able to recognize the symbols on the altar when he'd been here before, and he wasn't really even completely sure they were the same as the ones carved into the bottom of the lead box.

  There were the makings of a fine ghost story here, with mysterious legacies, mute villagers, and unexplained disappearances, but the fact of the matter was that mysteries of that sort held very little interest for Wycherly. One of his psychiatrists had told him that an interest in such things was a part of the process of self-mythologizing in which people in-

  vented inexplicable events to weave a shroud of extrordinariness around their own lives. If they could say they'd been kidnapped by space aliens or were the victims of Satanic cults, they didn't have to deal with their own emptiness and disappointments. He looked around—at the blue hills in the distance, at the verdant mountain stretching away below him. He supposed he was as bad at dealing with reality as anyone else was, but he preferred to cope by drinking himself into oblivion, not by making up fairy stories. Miracles were not part of Wycherly's worldview.

  He looked back toward the sanatorium. It took him a moment to focus on the deeper darkness that was the temple, and when he did, Sinah wasn't there.

  He heard her scream.

  The sound was thin and wavery—the sound of despair, rather than a cry for help. It galvanized Wycherly as no entreaty could have. He went down the stairs on his rump, clutching the long walking stick in his hand to avert the possibility of falling. When he reached the bottom, he levered himself to his feet again with the physical numbness of terror and hobbled quickly forward, slipping and swearing.

  He didn't see her anywhere. He rounded the altar, and his last hope died—she was not behind it. Where was she? Had she gone down the other set of stairs—into the darkness?

  He looked into the opening and saw a white shape moving in the dimness. His heart was a painful airless clutch in his chest, and the edge of the altar was a hard line against his back. The shape was Sinah—it was, it had to be—but he wasn't sure, and in that moment Wycherly realized with a wave of despairing violence that he would do anything, anything, if only he could never be afraid again.

  ''Welcome, Seeker — at last."

  The voice came from behind him. Reflexively, helplessly, Wycherly looked.

  A man stood facing Wycherly across the stone of the altar. He was wearing vestments of some sort; on his head he wore a gilded helmet that was like a stylized goat's head. The horns were nielloed silver, and its eyes were yellow sapphires—they glowed as if there was a flame behind them.

  They glowed almost as brightly as the man's eyes.

  Wycherly tried to speak, but his mouth had gone so dry that he couldn't open it. He felt a crushing pain in his chest, a nauseated disorientation, as though he were facing
a madman with a loaded gun.

  He was the madman. And this was something that came from the beast—a hallucination to hold him captive while Camilla came up out of the water and destroyed him. Wycherly understood hallucinations. They had a frightening persuasiveness, but they were intrusions into the real world. The insects, the mice, the slinking dark things, even the beast itself trespassed into an otherwise familiar world.

  This was different. This all-encompassing vision had the icy authenticity of genuine truth: This was not reality, and yet it was. Behind the man who had spoken were gleaming paneled walls, inset with frosted Lalique panels crafted with odd, half-familiar designs—not the bare rock of the ruined temple. Tapestries hung between the glass insets, their woven colors bright and elemental. Torches flamed upon the walls in golden holders—the floor gleamed, richly polished and covered with a faint silvery tracery.

  "Go away. ..." Wycherly croaked.

  "Do you wish the power I can give you? Or . . . not?" The man smiled, revealing large, tobacco-stained teeth.

  Madness, trap, threat. . .

  And deep inside him, there was a part that responded with fugitive eagerness to the offer, that answered before Wycherly could censor it.

  Power. Yes, power . . .

  Give it to me.

  "Leave me alone!" Wycherly shouted, wrenching himself away from that chill, piercing gaze. As he turned, he collided with something soft and warm. Sinah clung to him, half laughing, half sobbing in her relief.

  "I thought— I thought—" she said, clutching at him as if he were a lifeline.

  He tightened his arms around her—she was real, and living, and not a cold shadowy white thing waiting to drag him down to the Hell that waited for cowards and failures. He leaned his cheek against her hair, breathing in her salt and musk.

  And as he did her scent kindled a fire in his blood, and a hunger—a need —that he had not felt in years blossomed along his nerves.

  "Sinah ..."